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Perhaps now more than ever there is a gnawing thirst for spiritual knowledge and awakening. More people are meditating and are generally doing what they can to know spiritual truths. To the rest of the world, traveling the world as a spiritual seeker may seem like an expensive undertaking - traveling to India and staying in an ashram to meditate and learn yoga.

If you are fortunate enough to be able to take a sabbatical from your job and family responsibilities then you are indeed blessed. However make sure that what you intention are that you can make the time you can devote to your spiritual growth real Astrology can help you pinpoint places on the planet that will vibrate with the energy for spiritual development. For instance going to your Neptune Jupiter lines enhance the probability of meeting esoteric seekers and spiritual teachers.

However, the truth is that spirituality is very much an internal experience. And the first step in the right direction, towards awakening and insight, is going inward. Inward does not mean sitting in meditation for ten or twenty minutes. It means being aware in the present moment - in your body and with the myriad of thoughts running through your mind - and moving beyond the present moment to the gentle awareness that everything is one. That everything good and bad is in the mind of God or Supreme Consciousness.

This is really easier said than done as most people like to reminisce the past and imagine the future. However, spiritual awareness is only anchored in the now, where you are. There are many resources out there that will help you train yourself to be more aware in the present moment. Try different methods until you find one that works for you. And when you do find a method that works, you will find definitely feel within yourself a spark that can only be described as divine.

As you are working on your inner experience, it is equally important to work on your outer experience.

In Ashtanga yoga, meditation is always accompanied by the two disciplines of Yama and Niyama or inner action and outer action. You have heard about some of these observances of Yama and Niyama through the observances of non-violence, benevolent truth telling, among others.

In this day and age, it is impossible to sit in meditation the whole day and hope that you can become an enlightened individual. Spirituality does not exist in a vacuum, and going back to the idea that you should go beyond awareness into the gentle awareness of everything being in Gods mind, you cannot go on hurting others in the smallest of ways without affecting the entire fabric of the universe.

That said, be kind of others, not just in action, but in thought and words. Remember that even thoughts have energy and what you think about another person will affect him or her.